Race doesn't hold back America's "black rednecks." Nor does racism.

[Kire]

Crippled by Their Culture
Race doesn't hold back America's "black rednecks." Nor does racism.

BY THOMAS SOWELL
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population--whether in income, IQ, crime rates, or whatever--have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race--that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as well as white people. The tide began to turn in the second half of the 20th century, when the assumption developed that black-white differences were due to racism on the part of whites.

Three decades of my own research lead me to believe that neither of those explanations will stand up under scrutiny of the facts. As one small example, a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both.

If this disparity is not due to race, it is equally hard to explain by racism. To a racist, one black is pretty much the same as another. But, even if a racist somehow let his racism stop at the water's edge, how could he tell which student was the son or daughter of someone born in the West Indies or in Africa, especially since their American-born offspring probably do not even have a foreign accent?

What then could explain such large disparities in demographic "representation" among these three groups of blacks? Perhaps they have different patterns of behavior and different cultures and values behind their behavior.

More: http://tinyurl.com/94lkq

[AndyTiedye]

1. It Is a Queston of Who Can Afford to Send Their Kids to Harvard

Tuition & fees at Harvard are somewhere around $40,000 per year.

Most of those African and Carribean blacks going to Harvard
are the sons of the elite in their home countries.

At the same time financial aid for Americans to go to college has been
slashed by the ** regime, who needs more cannon fodder for the Crusades.

[AndyTiedye]

3. If Gas Went Up As Fast as College Tuitions, it Would be over $5/Gal

[madrchsod]

2. this "article" is the biggest pile of shit

i have ever seen. the troopers at stormfront couldn`t have written any better pile of racist bullshit. i guess when you write for the wall street rag you can write anything you want and not think you smell like shit.

[biscotti]

4. He is Hoover Institute

American Prospect magazine weirdo and Bell Curve nut.

[Kire]

6. okay, the messenger's out

what about the message?

[Igel]

5. Harvard had, and still has, pretty good financial aid.

The study showed that family income had an effect, but the effect was still significant after adjusting for SES. We can can income as the only factor.

Worse: admits were skewed towards immigrant blacks; graduates were even more skewed towards immigrants ( --> native blacks drop out more). Men were admitted far less, and dropped out more, than women.

Sowell's not unique in spouting 'culture'. The male/female split, however, is intriguing; one study showed that in a given school area blacks/whites did the same academically until they became teenagers. I'm sure that study's been debunked, but not all debunking in academia is intended for helpful criticism.

This is not unique to Harvard. At UCLA the children of immigrant blacks did about the same as whites in most respects, and black admits were skewed to immigrants; blacks overall had an worse drop out rate and GPA than whites. The researchers, as far as I know, didn't look at geography, family structure, rural/urban split, or cultural allegiance/alienation, so there are a number of possible factors that may be involved. But nobody liked the conclusions of the Harvard study (shown also elsewhere): to a distressing degree, affirmative action as a remedy for past discrimination is serving to aid not the descendents of slaves but the children of more recent immigrants. Harvard pledged to include SES/life-history information more than it had. But that left the real question unanswered.